Wednesday, 2 May 2012

2012 Zero XU Fasteners & Quick Charge Option

We're allowed to park at work from 1-May to 31-Oct. Electric vehicles are not permitted to recharge though, no available plug-ins and work isn't setup to allow for it. I also cannot bring in the removable power-pack and charge with the standalone charger. So, I worked out a deal with my in-laws to charge the XU at their place on the homebound portion of my daily commute.

Yesterday I looked in the XU Owner's Manual to find out how to quick-charge the power-pack:Remove the quick charge connector protectivecover. This is located under the seat on theright side of the motorcycle.

Seemed simple enough. I then looked in the manual to see how to remove the seat, no instructions found. I thought to myself, if it's like my WR then there's mount bolts at the back, and a post with a channel at the front. I looked at the rear and under the fender, there's what looks like an Allen key bolt and a Nyloc locking nut. I got out my Metric tools, the Allen key socket set fit but due to the space constraints under the read fender my metric socket would not fit. I used a 1/2" socket and breaker bar (none of my ratchets are small enough to fit in the space under the rear fender) to remove the lock nut, then the appropriate sized Allen key socket to remove the bolt.

Next up, I lifted the seat, to discover no quick-charge harness! Took a look in the standalone charger box, no harness there either. Took a closer look at the papers that came with the charger, and noticed the following:

ALGID 123

E-MOLI IMR26700 22S12P (34,8AH) LI-ION W/Q72

I thought 2012's were supposed to have EIG lithium ion pouch cells, not the cylindrical E-Moli cells of the previous year's models!?!? I went online, checked endless-sphere.com and confirmed the EIG vs E-Moli for 2012's. I emailed a contact at Zero asking for verification of the quick charge harness and the charger/algorithm, then remembered that one of the battery engineers at Zero is active on a couple of the electric motorcycle forums. I PM'd him and he replied quickly. It seems that the algorithm on the charger is fine (the standalone and bike-mounted chargers have the same part number and description decals) and that the algorithm spec sheet was printed with incorrect information.

Now all I have to do is wait for the quick charge harness to show up, and install that...